September 2nd, 2008

One of the most important things used to market bands are images. Band photos and album covers are important ways to communicate to a potential listener what the band is all about and as a result, have become a form of artwork in their own right. The importance of images on Figment is even more primary to a band’s success because there’s no music involved and it’s the first thing that a potential fan is going to see. So my advice is to always give a lot of thought to your band page photo and your album covers.

When deciding on an image, I always recommend using your own photos for a variety of reasons. First of all you don’t have to worry about copyrights. On Figment we try as much as possible to protect the rights of the copyright’s holder and will ban any copyrighted photos that you don’t have the rights to use. Secondly, I think you can do more with an image that you’ve created and can look for just the right type of shot to match the look you’re trying to give your band.

If you’re using found images try to pick the one that best captures the esthetic you’ve developed for your fake band, and again, steer clear of anything that contains a copyright symbol, is clearly the work of a professional photographer or contains other trademarked material (corporate logo’s, etc.).

When it comes to album covers it’s important that you try to make it look as much like a real album as possible. After all, this is a game based around the marketing of fake albums and if it doesn’t look real where’s the fun in that? I think the fun of Figment is clearly wrapped up in the creation of a musical figment of your imagination, so if you want people to buy into your idea then the artwork has to grab their attention and give them that “I get it” moment that makes them want to click on the Add To Your Collection link. Don’t forget, when someone buys your album they also become your fan and that means more lucre! So pull out the Photoshop or any simple photo editing app and add a title or your band’s name to the image you’ve selected. It’ll make it look a lot more like a real album. I know that not everyone has access to Photoshop, but there are a lot of simple web-based free image editing apps out there, so don’t let that stop you.

So what are some great examples of band photos and album covers on Figment? Well, here are some of my recent favorites.